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ROGER WILLIAMS, 



THE PROPHETIC LEGISLATOR, 



A PAPER 



READ BEFORE THE RHODE ISL.iND HISTORICAL SOCIETY, 



NOVEMBEK 8, 18*11. 



By THOMAS T. STONE. 



FEINTED BY REQUEST OF THE R. I. HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 




^. 



PROVIDENCE: 

A. CRAWFORD GREENE, PRINTER TO THE STATE. 
18(2. 



ROGEE WILLIAMS 



It will be my chief endeavor at this time to bring- before you, 
not so much the story, as the character, the service, the idea, of 
Eoger Williams. And in doing this, admitting such limitations, 
as bound all human souls, and even acknowledging' ^nthout re- 
serve some things which seem errors, I shall try to show the 
relation of these also to his higher qualities, and to lead your 
minds especially to the unity which amidst all chang'es charac- 
terizes his whole course. At the outset, however, it may not be 
improper to refer to the main facts — simply as facts — of his life. 
Here I have to repeat what history and' tradition report to us ; 
that he was born probably about the close of the sixteenth cen- 
tury, in Wales ; that he received an University training for the 
ministry of the Established Church ; that after a short ministry 
within that church he was drawn into another connection ; that 
he followed the Puritan immigrants to Massachusetts Bay, join- 
ing them in February, 1831 ; that in April of that year he became 
minister in Salem ; that from Salem he removed to Plymouth 
the following August, remaining there about two years ; that in 
August, 1633, he returned to Salem, becoming on the death of 
Mr Skelton, in 1634, his successor in the ministry, and continu- 
ing such until his removal by order of the General Court, in 
January, 1636. 

Thus is closed the first great period of his life, which we may 
consider as his education for the great future before him. Thence 
it is known that to his character as a man and a preacher, is 
added that of the founder of a Commonwealth. Beginning with 
a few friends a settlement on the eastern side of the Seekonk, he 
removed, by request of the Governor of the Plymouth Colony, 
which claimed that territory, to the western bank, laying the 



foundation of tliis City and State ; a foundation which, it is well 
known, through his influence, bore as its distinguishing- feature, 
absolute exemption of religion and conscience from political 
imposition. Here, severed from his former associates of Ply- 
mouth and the Bay, he remained steadily their friend, gaining 
by his virtues, as in his earlier abodes, the confidence of the na- 
tive tribes, so helping to preserve them in peace, and when war 
came, even in his old age, accepting a military commission in 
the last great struggle. Twice at least, alone and with slight 
pecuniary resources, he spent no little time in England in prose- 
cution of the interests of his feeble Commonwealth, sometimes 
when at home its chief officer, always in or out of office laboring 
for its grov/th, its honor, and prosperity. During all this time 
his mind, ever active, is pressing after what of truth he per- 
ceived in advance of his age, so that instead of staying where 
his predecessors had conducted him, he must go forward, asking 
new questions, inviting and welcoming new ideas, seeking to "re- 
form the reformation." At Plymouth he had been suspected of 
tendencies to what was called Anabaptism ; he was baptized by 
immersion at Providence. In Boston he had been dissatisfied 
with the position of the churches^ censuring them for communion 
with the English Church ; this church, in his view, being so cor- 
rupted by adherences to Rome, which in common with a largo 
portion of his Protestant contemporaries he regarded as unchrist- 
ian, if not Antichrist itself: — scarcely had he joined the Bap- 
tists, but he felt that the true church is still unattained and 
withdraws, neither Jrom his ministry nor from spiritual com- 
munion with devout men and women, but from oiitward ecclesi- 
astical relations. In such an external isolation he seems to have 
remained through the rest of his life. As facts equally signifi- 
cant we should observe that he strenuously maintained the rights 
of the natives to their own soil, denying the authority of the 
king, in virtue of wluit was deemed his Christianity, to appro- 
priate it : — the colonies ought to purchase fairly and pay for all 
the land which they occupied. Another of his peculiar opinions : — 
Instead of regarding an oath as a mere form or as an appeal to 
fear, he deemed it a solemn act of religious worship, to be freed 
from all superstitious ceremonies, and not to be taken irreligious- 
ly, so not by one deemed unregenerate. 

Now to understand the character supposed in most of the 



facts thus presented, wc must forgot our century and its ques- 
tions, and opinions, and endeavor to open within us the con- 
sciousness, so far as it was Protestant, of the seventeenth 
century, — the seventeenth century, moreover, as specifically 
English. In doing so we may go still further back. Protest- 
antism did not then regard itself as purely an onward movement 
in the process of humanity : it rather assumed a reverse step. 
Primeval Christianity Avas supposed to have sprung into exist- 
ence, full grown, perfect, armed with every weapon of assault 
or defence, thence going forth to summon and subdue mankind 
to itself, that thus ibllowing its Divine voice and step, the great 
hope of the world might be reached. So to understand the 
Hebrew and Greek Scriptures as seen in the light of the New 
Testament, was the highest knowledge ; the results of what were 
considered the four first General Councils being accepted as 
valid statements of Christian doctrine and the system which as 
strictly theological is represented by Athanasius, as what may 
be called anthropological is represented by Augustine, borne 
down through twelve centuries, being identified with Christian- 
ity as the very essence and foundation of all true religion. Bred 
within the compass of this faith, neither he nor any who might 
meet him as antagonists, appear ever to have thought of with- 
drawing from it. Luther and Melanchthon, Zuinglius, and 
Calvin, Cranmer and Jewell, Hooker and Robinson, differing 
much as they might, — as some of them actually did, — stood 
thus far essentially together. The Augsburg Confession, the 
Thirty-nine Articles, the Presbyterian Standards, and the Con- 
gregational Platforms, were thus in harmony with each other. 
Nor do I find indications that in regard to these subjects Roger 
Williams had at anytime departed, or been charged with depart- 
ing, from the ecclesiastical formulas. 

Now apply this statement to some of what were deemed his 
errors ; these two especially : — an oath should not be adminis- 
tered to " the unregenerate ; " it is wrong to join with an unre- 
generate man in prayer. However we may regard these propo- 
sitions, I confess it seems to me very far fi-om discreditable either 
to his logic or to his religious and moral character, standing on 
the ground of the theology received by his antagonists as well 
as by himself, to have advanced them. All agreed that the man 
imregenerate was in a state which made his whole moral action 



sinful ; he was unfit, previously to reg'eneration, to offer any 
worship but in the language of the day would have been hypo- 
critical, pei'haps not deliberately and consciously so, but actually 
so, notwithstanding. But the oath and the prayer Williams 
believed two solemn acts ol' worship ; so what would it be but 
})i-ofanation of both to demand oi- request them of one in whose 
lips both would be false and sinful ? 

This view becomes still clearer and reaches to other positions 
of Williams, when we consider more distinctly the relation in 
which regeneration was suppose<l to stand to the church. A 
common opinion refers the limitation "to the regenerate" of 
the right to communion as exprcs-^ed in the Lord's supper, oidy 
to what were termed " gathered churches," those in particular 
of a congregational form. The opinion is erroneous, if applied 
to the period in which Williams lived, the seventeenth century. 
Among all the nations confessing Christianity, regeneration so 
far as the word went, was virtually presupposed, I believe 
demanded, as a condition of such communion. Through the fall 
of the first man, the whole human race, such the doctrine, had 
become involved in one universal ruin. The original sin trans- 
mitted from him polluted as it dwelt in each and all of his natural 
posterity. All thus dead must be raised to new life ; otherwise 
they are incapable of incorporation into the church. To the 
majority in Western Europe, to the Roman church, and to a 
large section of the Englit»h, baptism was regeneration. And 
as in the prevalence of such a view nearly all, if not quite, had 
been baptized, so, all or nearly all, had become regenerate ; so 
nothing but either their own choice or some act of ecclesiastical 
discipline could hinder their exercise of the right. Within the 
church of England there came to be those wlio doubted this 
identity of baptism, an outward observance, with regeneration 
which they believed an inward divine process. And to this 
inward process they naturally applied the traditional view ; only 
the regenerate, all said, may be accepted to communion. But 
the regenerate are, not the baptized, — these may still remain 
dead in the original sin, — -but those, only those, who Iiave been 
born within their own consciousnf^ss into the new and heavenly 
life ; severed from the first Adam, united to the second, the Lord 
from heaven. So there can be no such thing as a true cliurch 
built up and constituted as either the Roman or the English. 



Not the Roman ; all Puritans and non-conformists consented that 
this was apostate. Not the English, many believed, though 
some among our New England fathers hesitated to admit this 
conclusion. Of these Roger Williams seems not to have been 
one. To him the church was spiritual, not national. A church 
might indeed grow till it should gather all the persons of a 
nation within its communion ; but a nation cannot as such grow 
to be a church. This principle enters into his doctrine of free- 
dom of conscience and soul. 

Now apply this order of thought. Communion in the memo- 
rial of the Lord's supper had become the expression, the silent 
word, of religious sympathy, — confined to those whom each 
church pronounced regenerate : excommunication the counter 
expression, the word which pronounced separation from the body 
deemed regenerate ; withholding communion without excom- 
munication the most expressive reproof for delinquency. Roger 
Williams is censured, pronounced comparatively illiberal, because 
he declined communion with the church in Boston when that 
church refused to acknowledge sin in communing with the church 
of England. But mark this ; lie did not denounce individual men 
and women ; toward them he never failed to leel and express the 
most tender affection ; it is the church, not the persons, to which 
his objection reaches. If equally consistent with the central ideas 
acknowledged on all sides, would not the church in Boston — the 
people of New England in general — have stood with him ? I 
am not undertaking to say how far those opinions were true, how 
far false,^ — this is not the task I have assumed ; I simply say, 
the ministers, the magistrates, the churches, of Massachusetts 
Bay stopped short in the application of their own principles ; 
Roger Williams had the eye to see what was their true applica- 
tion, and the heart to go forward just so far as he saw his way 
clear. If anything illiberal, the illiberality was not of himself, 
but of his age ; the consistency, the sincerity, the freedom, the 
manly utterance of thought, were not of his age, but of his own 
nobility of spirit. 

An example of this nobility is furnished in one instance, — 
suppose Williams to have been concerned in the action. Gov- 
ernor Endicott had the sign of the cross — the cross, I suppose, 
of St. George — removed from the flag. And it is thought the 
influence of Williams led him to do it. For this act I do not 



8 

remember ever to have seen anything which went in favor of 
Williams beyond excuse or apolog-y. I shall venture something 
else. The reformers even of the English church put away not a 
few things wliich the earlier church regarded as sacred ; the 
Puritans went further, seeking to leave nothing which could lead 
to idolatry or endanger relapse to the church which they had 
left, for what they honestly believed its corruptions and its false- 
ness. The flag was indeed an emblem of the kingdom, not of 
the church, farther than the church was connected with the 
kingdom. But was St. George a saint to worship in the state, 
to renounce in the church ? Should the cross which must be 
banished from the church be suffered to invite homage from the 
Commonwealth ? Idolatry is idolatry everywhere and anywhere. 
And I doubt whether any tiling nobler than fear of exciting a new 
displeasure in England prevented a general sympathy with this 
act through the whole colony. I will not excuse it. I will ofter 
no apology. I will say, taking the act according to what I 
understand to have been its meaning, it was another great protest 
against falsehood ; another assertion of the incompetency of the 
State to sanction wrong ; another utterance in the face of impe- 
rial authority, whether it be right in the sight of God to 
hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye. The thing 
may be pronounced a trifle ; the significance is infinite. 

Another thing, not uncertain like this, but of undoubted cer- 
tainty in his political relations. The king in his grant to the 
colonies claimed to be sovereign lord of the continent, transfer- 
ing it to the colonists on the ground of his own prerogative, 
without intimation of the antecedent rights of the original pos- 
sessors and occupants. It is by no means strange that men 
clear of sight as Roger Williams, should perceive the falseness 
as well as arrogance of this claim, and that seeing it one so 
frank as he should have given distinct utterance to his percep- 
tion. This he did in a letter to the king, of which I do not 
find that any copy exists. So far as we have means — chiefly 
from his own expressions — of ascertaining his views, they were 
far enough from dishonorable to his character ; views perfectly 
true in themselves, and not unworthy to be declared and serious- 
ly heeded at a time when there were such temptations to 
overlook, to invade, even to set at nought, the rights of the 
native people. At that hour Williams denied the right of those 



9 

who were called kings " by virtue of their Christianity to take 
and give away the lands and countries of other men." An , 
evident truth, and the utterance then might appear most timely ! 
And this letter, he tells us that he drew up, not only moved by 
his own solemn conviction, but sustained by the concurrence of 
others, — "not without the approbation of some of the chiefs of 
New England." 

After all Roger Williams has been characterized by a phrase 
so brief, — if true, so felicitous, — that we need to examine it : 
" Conscientious contentiousness." Conscientious — -none have 
ever ventured to deny this ; what is the evidence of his conten- 
tiousness ? I have been able to find nothing which seems to n^e 
Xso much as to countenance it except in one of his last acts, and 
quite, 1 think, his last book ; — his controversy with the Friends, 
usually called Quakers, in Newi)ort and Providence, and his 
report of it in a volume afterward publislied, bearing lor part of 
its title, George Fox digged out of his Burowes. So far as I 
am aware, the theology of this work is the same as in his other 
writings, the same as generally received at that, time in New 
England. The movement of his mind, quick, energetic, earnest 
as it was, directed itself always, I think, to another course than 
that of original inquiry concerning doctrine ; the right of unob- 
structed thought, not the question of the results of thought, 
was enough to fill out one life. And as with him the doctrine 
was traditional, so the method of his presenting it in this contro- 
versy. The grand soul of Milton had not risen above the use 
of severe words ; scarce any, even if there were any, in his 
ago had surmounted it. George Fox himself certainly had not. 
What wonder at the. contrast then of this work with his other 
writings, so full of sweetness and brotherly affection ? These 
other works are utterances of his own soul ; this is echo of his 
age. Here again besides defending what he deems truth, he has 
a side purpose ; he wishes to show to his friends who were 
averse to his opinions and his legislation, and to the people 
everywhere who might distrust them, that he too could defend 
what they alike believed truth, and defend it as strenuously as 
they. Hence in part at least these errors. 

He could dispute, and dispute keenly too, against what he 
believed to be false. But he could never be drawn to relinquish 
his central idea. That idea he had set forth within the first years 



10 

of Ilis ministry in New England. That idea he had carried with 
him from Salem to Providence. That idea he had incorporated 
into the fundamental law of the infant State. That idea he con- 
tinued by deed and word to proclaim with a breadth greater than 
any known writer of his century. Milton was y':'ung-er than ho, 
and his personal friend, as he was also the high champion of 
freedom ; but Milton set bounds to the liberty of religi()us utter- 
ance. Taylor was younger than either, and gave to his country 
the great plea for liberty of prophesying ; but the pro})hesying 
after all must be within tlie compass of acknowledged Christ- 
ianity. And later still, Locke urges similar enlargement of con- 
fession and speech; but even Locke,* I think, failed of reaching 
the amplitude of Williams's thought; he made the claim large 
as humanity — Jew, Mahometan, Gentile, are all included. Per- 
haps even Williams might have never distinctly stated to himself 
the difieren(;e between toleration and freedom. But that difl'er- 
cnce underlies all his arguments. Their spirit exclaims, " I beg 
no privilege, I demand a right. Talk of tolerating me, — of 
bearing with me, of graciously suilering me to think and to tell 
my thought ! What have you to do with this ? Who empow- 
ered you to assume that you are in the right, yet that from your 
loftier elevation you will let me speak a word which you do not 
accept ? — Thought is of God, not of man ; to utter his thought 
is the right which God has given, not a favor which churches or 
states have conferred." And the prophet holds this prerogative 
of speech as not a right only inherent in his nature, but as a trust 
which God conunands him to put into use. Our moral hero 
received the trust and obeyed the commandment. 

AVliy charge the prophetic soul with contentiousness ?• — with 
loving to produce excitement ? with something like a necessity 
to live in controversy ? For myself I see no shadow of evidence 
that this was his characti'r. Not only was he conscientious, but 
moreover of a very kindly and aflectionate disposition ; a man 
whose integrity is not juore marked than his power of attracting 
friends to himself. At Plymouth and at Salem he was loved as 
few are ever loved ; men like VV^inthrop, and Winslow, when 
they miglitnot approve eitlier liis ojiinion or his action, continued 
still to love his person. And probably no man ever lived in 
New England who at once exerted such influence over the origi- 
jial, inhabitants of our soil, aiul gained so perfectly their affection 



11 

and confidence. Do characteristics so unquestionable as these 
indicate contentiousness of disposition or conduct ? When men 
speak in this way they seem to me to come nearer convicting 
themselves of ignorance of some high moral experiences, than 
justifying either their censures or the conduct of the ministers 
and magistrates of Massachusetts. Great thoughts, such as 
those which inspired him amidst the usurpations of his day, 
must out ; they cannot be kept in. Men who have never known 
such experiences, can never judge ariglit of the laws which 
they embosom. Tiio old Hebrew })rophet was charged with 
disturbing Lsracl ; the fire of God flamed from his heart. But 
the ages have confessed that his retort was just ; and tlie tyrant 
king was the real troubl(;r of his nation. The government of 
Massachusetts Avas introducing tyranny not the less real because 
it was in unconsciousness ; it is something diviner than conten- 
tiousness which pronounced the redeeming truth. There was 
disturbance ; who made it ? — the intruders on the rights of the 
soul ? — or the gentle young man wlio declared the intrusion 
wrong ? — who practically proved his declaration and inaugurated 
thereby the most beneficent revolution in government which the 
history of eighteen centuries has recorded. Massachusetts was 
certainly wrong ; Roger Williams was as certainly right. It is 
the old story forever repeated. A prophet was never denounced 
or punished as a prophet ; there is something else always pro- 
duced against him. A martyr never suffered, if we believe his 
antagonists, because he attests the truth ; he is heretic or obsti- 
nate, seditious or disobedient. We know whom men once tried 
to make a king, and could not, because he retired into a solitude 
to escape the pressure ; yet not long after a charge on his trial 
for lilb or death is that he made himself king. So it is always. 
So it is here. To clear the guilty oppressor; the innocent victim 
must be charged with fault not his own. 

In fact I think we should drop the tone of apology. What I 
have said thus far may seem like vindication of the prophetic 
preacher and statesman. If so, let me ask you to put it in your 
own minds into some higher language befitting more truly the 
subject ; especially when I add one thing more. Religious tole- 
ration, as men are accustomed to call it, seems to be grounded 
in some minds on the presupposition that religion is not of suffi- 
cient value to be meddled with by the state ; men's opinions and 



12 

worships may bo let alone simply because they are all trifles ; 
wiser heads care for none of these things. The precise opposite 
of Williams. With him man should be free to think, free to 
worship, because thought and worship are things too high, too 
sacred, for any government of men to control. To him God is 
the supreme perfection ; to him man is sacred as child of his 
destined to immortality ; to him the soul is the man himself; to 
him the mysteries which lie hidden in tlie depths of the religicms 
consciousness are the groat interests of humanity ; to him true 
faith and inward worship and sincere obedience to the highest 
voice, are the great realities. But faith, hope and charity can 
never be forced ; they can grow only from the free soul rising 
by virtue of the quickening spirit to tiu^ living God. Within 
such holy ground, within these precincts of love and truth, let 
none dare intrude with endeavor to compel or control what God 
makes iree. Enovigh lor human government to protect the bodies 
and estates of men ; to guard and watch over what it is able to 
manage ; bej^ond its ability, beyond its ])rovince, let it never 
presume to pass. Let it do what it can and ought, not usurp- 
ing dominion where it has neither right nor fitness. As illustra- 
tion of his spirit let me give one grand declaration : — " Chaines 
of gold and diamonds are cliaines, and nuiy [»inch and gall as 
sore and deepe as tliose of brasse and iron and so forth. All 
lawes to force even the grossest conscience — of the most besot- 
ted idolaters in the world, Jew or Turke, Papist or Pagan — I say 
all such laws restraining from or constraining to worsliij), and in 
matters merely si>iritual, and of no civil nature, such laws, such 
acts, are chaines, ai-e yokes not possibly to be fitted to the soules 
neck, without oppression and exasperation." 

Dropping now wliether vindication or eulogy, let us mark the 
adjustment of all these things, the natural qualities of Koger 
Williams, his earnest religious convictions, the successive evenfs 
of his own life compared with the condition of society both in 
England and America, meeting to render him the Prophetic 
Legislator of a new Commonwealth. Out ihnn the depths of 
his own soul quickened by heavenly inspiration grew the one 
grand principle which he- proclaimed almost as soon as he touched 
the coast of New England. Like every Divine principle, it 
gained strength and clearness by the opposition which it encoun- 
tered. Could he have uttered his thought unchecked, not only 



might wo never have heard his fervent protests against "the 
bloody tcnent of persecution," but the whole might have re- 
mained a mere theory, privately or occasionally expressed, and 
so died with other kindred utterances. His idea demanded a 
state to embody it ; the prophet was needed somewhere else 
than in the pulpit, or at the printing press ; the jdace is ready 
waiting as unconscious as himself for the new law. A pro- 
phetic legislator, moreover, not only when we consider the higli 
source ol" his service, but when we note the conse juences which 
have llowed from what seemed his }iuiid)le condition ; — freedom 
of religious speech and worshij), illustrated in a state of which 
he was lather, per|)etuated through its wliole histo-'y, proved not 
only safe but beneficent to mankind, has passed from the faith 
of one living soul, into the grandeur of an institution destined 
to encircle and bless the world. 

But this opens a larger range of view. 

Thus far we have contemplated the historical character. Let 
us endeavor now to translate it into its ge7iuin( significance ; 
the living idea which, in the growth of our owi. nation and in 
the progress of humanity, he brought into manifestation and 
distinct action. The idea of humanity which Cliristianity em- 
bodied, man as man true son of the Eternal Father, was per- 
secuted in behalf of their national theocracy by the Jews, in 
behalf of their lo'cal gods by the nations which we call heathen. 
So soon as it had overcome and outlived this series of persecu- 
tions, diversities of thought inevitable to tlie human mind, if, 
declining to stand still, it seeks to advance toward the truth 
Avhich seems always near, but is always receding as we tliink 
ourselves ai)proaching ; sucli inevitable diversities called i'orth 
internal contlicts fearful as those which had been surmounted. 
Alternately with the changes of imperial opinion in Constantine 
and those of his predecessors who acknowledged the new faith, 
the adherents of Athanasius and the Nicaean decisions on the 
one side, and on the other those of Arius and other teachers 
deemed heretical, were like their respective leaders exposed to 
extreme severities of punishment from the magistrates. The 
Divine idea was broken into discordant idol-s. And these idols 
of dogma and sect surrounded themselves with the powers of 
the governments which accepted them. So it was until at 
length one of them is either destroyed or driven into silence and 



14 

submission. Throiig-li the wliole medieval period this enforced 
sil(M!cc was the establislied order ; wlionever that silence was 
broken, tlu; Puntihcate pronounced Catholic had attained the 
power ill all Western Europe either to suppress the voice or to 
punish tlio speaker. Herein 'Ciiurch and State had become one. 
I'rotestantism brought the same idols of dogma and sect from 
the church whicdi it abandoned and d(Miounced, and with them 
the same instruments of protection and ])unish!nent. In Eng- 
land it Avas the state which assumed control of the church ; — 
its political sovcu'eign constituted and acknowledged Head of 
the Cliurch. Through several reigns, the claim we may perhaps 
say, was made good. With Henry the eighth and Edward the 
sixth accordingly, there is a Church of England called Protes- 
tant ; the churcli of England comes under the Pope with Mary 
f(u- the |)apal power eipially with the true reformed thought 
denies the king's suprenuicy in the church ; Elizabeth, we might 
almost say, Avas the English Church, so complete the dominion 
which the magistracy had gained over the conscience and reli- 
gious thouglit. But the soul of man lives through all these 
oppressions. James would be wluit Elizabeth had been. But 
neitlier was he a Tudor, nor was the tliouglit of England the 
same as a half century earlier. Charles mistook both himself 
and his age as really as his father ; men were determined to ask 
their own questions and to declare the answers made to them. 
Thirteen centuries of political usurpation over human thought 
had made jjersecution an established institution; as much so, 
for a familiar ilhistration, as slavery thirty years agfi in America, 
possibly more so. Thirteen centuries, the combined powers of 
church and state enibrced to tlie utmost of their ability, com. 
plete submission to what they declared the truth of God. AVho 
shoidd question such antliority ? What the idea which should 
go forth in untried armor to drive from the temple and the pal- 
ace those idols which mistaken piety and imperious power had 
united to set up ? No doubt that idea — for it is ancient as the 
stiiil of man, nay, as the being ol" God, liad often appeared, 
recognized or unrecognized, welcomed as Divine by some pre- 
pared heart, or laid as demon by some priestly charm ; at length 
during that very reign which ended in the practical demonstra- 
tion that man is greater tliaii king,' and mind holier than liie- 
ran;hy, here amidst strenuous endeavors both of church and 



3477^-54 



15 

state, of ministers of religion invoking power to suppress sup- 
posed error, -and (jf magistrates controlling by their acts, both 
ministers and churches, lived and moved in one banished man, 
t'ac prophetic founder of a state, the grand idea which at once 
interprets his own history and opens a new era in the progress 
of mankind : — he called it Soul Freedom. Soul Freedom : that 
is tlie meaning of tlie (iity years struggle, suflbriiig, labor, which 
in establisliing a state, whose inauguration was rescue of the soul 
from all i)oliticul impositions, should introduce a new order to go 
forth over all the earth, overtluxnving wliat were deemed among 
the most sacred traditions of so many centuries, and dismissing 
the state i'roni all supervision over the free thought and word of 
num. 

But this freedom of soul means more than that. The state is 
not the only tyrant of the conscience. From Constantine — go- 
ing no further back as we might — the church has been no less 
tyrannous. Nor has one soul ever risen within the bosom of the 
church, seeking in solemn and hearty earnestness to indicate 
the way to higher vision and larger thought and deeper commu- 
nion, without finding in the church perhaps the sternest repres- 
sion and the fastening of by no means the lightest bond. All 
the force of this majestic idea whose triumph over the state 
marked the seventeenth century, must be transferred with no 
limitation to the church, and advanced so far that every man 
shall feel himself encouraged by the church as well as by the 
state, and cheered in all his efibrts to gain and spread abroad 
loi'tier conceptions of the truth and a holier communion of man- 
kind. 

No limitation 1 Freedom is never a thing to fear ; the only for- 
midable enemy is slavery. Men sometimes think there is too 
nuich freedom ; forgetting that slavery is sole parent of all those 
evils which they refer to freedom. Men not seldom ask what 
should be the limitations of freedom ? — of freedom even in relig- 
ion ? No limitations, we may answer, not limitations, only pro- 
tections, encouragements, growths. Freedom of soul I What 
does this phrase mean ? The soul itself in the unrestrained ac- 
tion of its own essential and immortal elements. The soul first 
of all within itself uncontrolled, uimioved by tyrannous passions, 
by enthralling appetites, by reasonless i)rcjudices, by selfish 
impulses, by anything which can be pronounced sin ; just so far 



'}>• '-. 



16 

as an^^ sin, just so far frcoJi)in is lost, just so far slavery is intro- 
duced. The soul is so far fettered by an alien force. Its own 
laws, the laws one with its godlike essence, are dethroned, and 
laws which are not truly laws are enthroned. Men are accus- 
tomed to 2)ut freedom and' law in contrast; true freedom and right 
law are one — one everlasting- reality appearing in two aspects. 
The soul once in freedom evolves law ; the soul obedient to law 
finds the law but the life itself from God, wherein it rises and 
soars, unbounded, through cloudless air, evermore nearer to the 
great sun whicli (piickens and erdightens the universe. It lives 
in tlod, because (iod lives in it. Its own freedom is his unshack- 
led life ; its law is that same life concentrating all its powers, 
guiding all its movements, enlarging its freedom, and uniting it 
with the great harmonies of the spiritual sphere and of the 
realms of nature. 













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